Indeed, Lox, it is understanding I seek but my point is that saying a particular Pitch Set (to borrow Jack's term) is called Myxolydian does not explain anything, it merely gives you a label to recognise it by. Useful but no challenge to understanding.

You say -

"When you listen to music, you hear where it is likely to go"
"the seventh note of the major scale crying out to move up a semitone to the tonic note above it"
"The ear likes music to resolve into stable chords."

All of these are subjective observations. Music theory, at least at the level of the books I've been reading, does nothing to explain them, it just gives them names.

"the answer to your question is that dominant to tonic resolution involves movement from dissonant harmony to consonant harmony"

Checking my books, it appears that the dominant without the seventh moving to the tonic is sufficient to define a Perfect Cadence so it is a move from one consonance to another. Anyway, the description seems to imply more than that. It is not just one set of notes followed by another but a specific set "resolving" to another with specific notes "leading to" specific notes.

"The ear likes music to resolve into stable chords.

Why is that? ... well that's another question ..."

I was going to say that's the question I'm asking but actually I don't think it is. That moves into the psychology of perception. There seems to be a correlation between the simple mathematics of notes in vertical harmony and the effect on the human ear. Quite why is, indeed, "another question" but I'd like to find similar correlations in horizontal harmony.

Jack calls it "pseudo-physical" and implies that it's just cultural and therefore, presumably, learnt. I think there is an element of truth in that but that pull from the leading note to the tonic feels real enough.

I'll respond to Jack's post separately.